Official Notice From Providence Public Schools on Meetings with Ai3

We’ve just received the official notice about the upcoming meetings, as well as a Flyer (pdf file) that you might hand out or post in your daycare, coffee shop, or other community gathering place.

NOTICE : The Providence School District has several buildings in various stages of design/construction progress—Adelaide, Central, Hanley and Bishop.

In the case of Bishop, community involvement has been taking place over the course of the year. The next step in order to obtain approval from RIDE for the funding of the Nathan Bishop Project is to develop a site specific design that is acceptable to the community. In the instance of an existing building greater than 50 years old, the design also has to be submitted and approved by the RI Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission. To accomplish this, the City engaged an architectural design firm, Architecture Involution (ai-3.com) to facilitate this process and develop the requisite design documents. The aim is to meet a feasible timeline that reflects the Supt’s commitment to the community to re-open Bishop. This firm presented to the Bishop steering committee last week, and two community meetings have been scheduled for April 11th and 24th (see attached [flyer]) to discuss the options that exist–rebuild, renovate or hybrid. The firm will present examples of middle school design concepts for these three options to review with the community and obtain their thoughts and comments.

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There are many standards by which we can measure the three types of school construction (renovation, new construction and hybrid) that will be proposed for the New Nathan Bishop. In my opinion, we should focus our discussion on three questions I will list in a moment. Before I do, I would like to review what we already know.

A. The City has hired an excellent architect. We have seen a large body of their work on their website and at demonstrations before committees.

B. This architect’s track record gives us confidence that they will develop a design that is compatible with the character of the Sessions/Elmgrove neighborhood, be it new construction, renovation or a hybrid.

C. The architect has a good track record on achieving “green building” objectives.

Since we are satisfied about these other goals, I believe that can focus on the need of the children in our neighborhood, as well as the needs of the children in the rest of the City. With that in mind, I propose that we focus on these three questions:

1. Which design will provide the best learning environment for the students?

2. Which design will permit the New Nathan Bishop to open at the earliest possible time?

3. Is the option affordable, in terms of State funding guidelines, and the City’s need to fund a facilities plan for the entire District?

Let me explain why these questions are important.

1. Learning Environment. As we learned at an ESPEC forum last year, middle schools are failing both in Providence and nationally because children are “falling through the cracks” in large, impersonal settings. In order to be a successful middle school, the New Nathan Bishop must create multiple relationships among children, and between children and adults through such innovations as team teaching, advisories and so forth. Thus, for example, while we may have personal, nostalgic memories of imposing and intimidating schools, this is not necessarily the best thing for our children. In my view, the learning environment is the single most important factor in evaluating the three options.

2. Timing. Timing could make a large difference for our community. We are at a crucial point in restoring public education in the Greater East Side. In the past 12 months, parents and neighbors have made great strides to re-engage in a public education system that many of us (and our predecessors) had abandoned over the last 30 years. We have developed a great deal of momentum based on the hope of a New Nathan Bishop. We could lose a whole cohort of families from the neighborhood if the opening of the New Nathan Bishop is delayed by one or two years due to facilities issues.

3. Cost. The City’s overall facilities plan is currently pegged at $792 million. The New Nathan Bishop deserves its fair share of those funds as a vital part of this greater picture. If one alternative is significantly less expensive or more expensive (for example, $10 million is a lot of money), then we owe it to the rest of the City to think carefully before claiming such a significant additional outlay of funds. If two alternatives (which are compatible with the neighborhood and are green buildings, as we can trust with these architects) draw equal scores on both learning environment and timing, then it is not fair to the rest of the City (and potentially harmful to future plans to renovate King and/or Gregorian) to claim extra, marginally productive funds for our neighborhood.

I encourage everyone to come up with their own list of key questions for next week’s forum, and prepare to ask them to the architects. Then we all can make our own best judgment for ourselves, and offer our input to the City and the School Department.